We octopuses (yes, that’s the plural, don’t make me spray a jet of water in your face) are really in the zeitgeist lately. A recent article in The New York Times has some people wringing their hands over how and when we are allowed to be sliced up alive for lab experiments without even the protections given to mice or monkeys, and The Telegraph ran an article questioning whether people should be eating us for dinner. And that’s just the beginning. There’s also My Octopus Teacher, about a human who befriends an octopus and then lets a shark eat his friend’s arm because it will make for a more dramatic film. Oh, and there’s The Soul of an Octopus, which we haven’t read but are totally going to once our TBR pile gets under control.
Now – as much as we resent being compared to mice (insulting) or monkeys (creepy little mini-humans), we’ll take whatever laboratory protections we can get. Especially if it means they’ll stop slicing us up alive. And if humans want to start feeling bad for continually snacking on us (sometimes alive – what the hell is wrong with them?) because it turns out we’re actually smart, we’re all for it. Maybe it will stop them from industrially farming us by the millions and freezing us to death. Maybe (sign the petition to stop this here).
But it raises a question: just how smart do you have to be before humans will stop eating you?
Now, all animals know that humans are voracious eaters. We’ve been losing kin to them for millennia. And all that eating is really working for them: every year there are more and more of them, and fewer and fewer of us. But humans don’t eat just any of us: they seem to eat certain animals over others, and sometimes only certain parts of an animal. It’s hard for us octopuses to find a pattern here, but we’ll try.
Ok – let’s take pigs. Some humans do not eat pigs as a rule, but lots and lots of humans do eat them, even though they also say, “pigs are smarter than dogs” all the time. Now, neither pigs nor dogs spend a lot of time in the water, so we don’t know them well, but we are confused: very few humans eat dogs, but many eat the smarter pig. Why? Well, it is said that humans have developed an emotional attachment to dogs which they have not developed with pigs. By the way – we heard someone argue that dogs are useful, but we have seen a Pomeranian on the beach, and we doubt it.
So it must just be that dogs are special to humans. Good for them. It looks like it’s taken thousands of years of hanging out with humans for dogs to stop being eaten by them (though I hear some of them still get made into soup, and that Amundsen snacked on his dogsled teams with abandon even after they took him to the South Pole, which just seems ungrateful). Millennia of cohabitation seems like a big investment to make, but then again dogs aren’t very smart (at least not as smart as pigs, apparently) so they’re working with what they have.
We discussed it, and we’ve come to believe that humans probably just find pigs delicious, while dogs are only mildly appetizing, so that works in the dogs’ favor.
We can skip right over cows and chickens, who apparently are so delicious that humans will put them in jail so they can eat the stuff excreted from their bodies, and then eat their bodies too. Humans have invested a lot of time and energy into this jail / murder system for cows and pigs, so unless one of them suddenly becomes a mathematician and solves the Three Body Problem, we think they’re eternally screwed.
We thought long and hard about sharks. Sharks are a strange one: first of all, sharks are jerks, as all octopuses know, but they are certainly smart jerks, demanding the most out of us to come up with new ways to hide and get away from them. Humans are scared of sharks, who sometimes eat one of them (not cool, apparently, but a pretty good sign that sharks are smarter than humans are giving them credit for). Some humans eat the whole shark, but many humans make soup out of just the fins of the sharks, hacking them off and then dumping the shark back in the ocean to drown. This just seems unnecessarily cruel – but maybe it's some human tit-for-tat. If so, it seems out of proportion: humans kill around 100 million sharks a year, and sharks kill about 10 humans a year . . .
Ok, we thought again, and now we think sharks aren’t that smart. If they were, they would just call off this war. That’s ten million sharks for every human. It’s just not worth it, guys. No matter how tempting those human legs might be, dangling off the surfboard.
Ok, then there are whales. And here maybe we are starting to crack the code. For the most part, humans don’t eat whales (who, by the way, taste amazing: we found a dead one on the reef the other day, and it was phenomenal). Humans even get angry at other humans for eating whales. So angry that they made a whole very boring TV show about it. As far as we can tell, humans think whales are smart because whales have a big brain, even bigger than their own, and because whales sing intricate songs the humans think might be language.
The humans aren’t sure the whales really are smart, though, because they can’t understand them. Which is a very human thing – If I understand you, you are smart. If I don’t, you are dumb. Not me. Sigh . . . this would feel unfair, if humans didn’t also do the same thing to one another all the time.
So – look. What it comes down to is this: if humans recognize something you are doing that seems like something they can do, some of them might feel worse about eating you. Unless you are delicious (pigs). If you kiss up to them all the time (dogs) they mostly will not eat you. If you eat them (sharks) they will torture millions of you to death. If you sing them a song (whales) they will mostly leave you alone and might even fight for you.
It's very mysterious. It seems maybe like it’s more about being harmless and entertaining than intelligent, if you ask us. And it certainly isn’t about being delicious: we taste like warm rubber plus whatever oil and spices those bastards cook us in, but they keep sinking their teeth into our flesh.
In short: you animals and we octopuses know that all of us are intelligent, often in ways other species cannot understand. We’re also intelligent enough to know that it doesn’t matter how smart you are: humans will eat you if they want to. And they are very good at coming up with reasons to continue doing it. The best you can do (unless you are a dog or that lazier, sharper-armed thing that basically looks like a dog) is stay as far away from them as possible and hope that at some point, they stop multiplying so quickly, or learn to make some substitute for us that is delicious enough to distract them from murdering us all.
P.S. Congratulations to all the lobsters about to be cooked in Switzerland, where it is now illegal to boil you alive. Now you can be killed before going in the pot. And probably in a less awful way! Humans (well, the Swiss, anyway) are so merciful!
Now – as much as we resent being compared to mice (insulting) or monkeys (creepy little mini-humans), we’ll take whatever laboratory protections we can get. Especially if it means they’ll stop slicing us up alive. And if humans want to start feeling bad for continually snacking on us (sometimes alive – what the hell is wrong with them?) because it turns out we’re actually smart, we’re all for it. Maybe it will stop them from industrially farming us by the millions and freezing us to death. Maybe (sign the petition to stop this here).
But it raises a question: just how smart do you have to be before humans will stop eating you?
Now, all animals know that humans are voracious eaters. We’ve been losing kin to them for millennia. And all that eating is really working for them: every year there are more and more of them, and fewer and fewer of us. But humans don’t eat just any of us: they seem to eat certain animals over others, and sometimes only certain parts of an animal. It’s hard for us octopuses to find a pattern here, but we’ll try.
Ok – let’s take pigs. Some humans do not eat pigs as a rule, but lots and lots of humans do eat them, even though they also say, “pigs are smarter than dogs” all the time. Now, neither pigs nor dogs spend a lot of time in the water, so we don’t know them well, but we are confused: very few humans eat dogs, but many eat the smarter pig. Why? Well, it is said that humans have developed an emotional attachment to dogs which they have not developed with pigs. By the way – we heard someone argue that dogs are useful, but we have seen a Pomeranian on the beach, and we doubt it.
So it must just be that dogs are special to humans. Good for them. It looks like it’s taken thousands of years of hanging out with humans for dogs to stop being eaten by them (though I hear some of them still get made into soup, and that Amundsen snacked on his dogsled teams with abandon even after they took him to the South Pole, which just seems ungrateful). Millennia of cohabitation seems like a big investment to make, but then again dogs aren’t very smart (at least not as smart as pigs, apparently) so they’re working with what they have.
We discussed it, and we’ve come to believe that humans probably just find pigs delicious, while dogs are only mildly appetizing, so that works in the dogs’ favor.
We can skip right over cows and chickens, who apparently are so delicious that humans will put them in jail so they can eat the stuff excreted from their bodies, and then eat their bodies too. Humans have invested a lot of time and energy into this jail / murder system for cows and pigs, so unless one of them suddenly becomes a mathematician and solves the Three Body Problem, we think they’re eternally screwed.
We thought long and hard about sharks. Sharks are a strange one: first of all, sharks are jerks, as all octopuses know, but they are certainly smart jerks, demanding the most out of us to come up with new ways to hide and get away from them. Humans are scared of sharks, who sometimes eat one of them (not cool, apparently, but a pretty good sign that sharks are smarter than humans are giving them credit for). Some humans eat the whole shark, but many humans make soup out of just the fins of the sharks, hacking them off and then dumping the shark back in the ocean to drown. This just seems unnecessarily cruel – but maybe it's some human tit-for-tat. If so, it seems out of proportion: humans kill around 100 million sharks a year, and sharks kill about 10 humans a year . . .
Ok, we thought again, and now we think sharks aren’t that smart. If they were, they would just call off this war. That’s ten million sharks for every human. It’s just not worth it, guys. No matter how tempting those human legs might be, dangling off the surfboard.
Ok, then there are whales. And here maybe we are starting to crack the code. For the most part, humans don’t eat whales (who, by the way, taste amazing: we found a dead one on the reef the other day, and it was phenomenal). Humans even get angry at other humans for eating whales. So angry that they made a whole very boring TV show about it. As far as we can tell, humans think whales are smart because whales have a big brain, even bigger than their own, and because whales sing intricate songs the humans think might be language.
The humans aren’t sure the whales really are smart, though, because they can’t understand them. Which is a very human thing – If I understand you, you are smart. If I don’t, you are dumb. Not me. Sigh . . . this would feel unfair, if humans didn’t also do the same thing to one another all the time.
So – look. What it comes down to is this: if humans recognize something you are doing that seems like something they can do, some of them might feel worse about eating you. Unless you are delicious (pigs). If you kiss up to them all the time (dogs) they mostly will not eat you. If you eat them (sharks) they will torture millions of you to death. If you sing them a song (whales) they will mostly leave you alone and might even fight for you.
It's very mysterious. It seems maybe like it’s more about being harmless and entertaining than intelligent, if you ask us. And it certainly isn’t about being delicious: we taste like warm rubber plus whatever oil and spices those bastards cook us in, but they keep sinking their teeth into our flesh.
In short: you animals and we octopuses know that all of us are intelligent, often in ways other species cannot understand. We’re also intelligent enough to know that it doesn’t matter how smart you are: humans will eat you if they want to. And they are very good at coming up with reasons to continue doing it. The best you can do (unless you are a dog or that lazier, sharper-armed thing that basically looks like a dog) is stay as far away from them as possible and hope that at some point, they stop multiplying so quickly, or learn to make some substitute for us that is delicious enough to distract them from murdering us all.
P.S. Congratulations to all the lobsters about to be cooked in Switzerland, where it is now illegal to boil you alive. Now you can be killed before going in the pot. And probably in a less awful way! Humans (well, the Swiss, anyway) are so merciful!